IPW2200 stop to work after upgrading

Hi, I have Backtrack 4 installed in a HDD and not updated since maybe May 2010.

Today morning I just updated/upgraded my Backtrack 4 and the wireless my Thinkpad has (Intel 2200 BG) stop to work.

Looking to the booting messages I read something about "Main .... error ... cannot load ipw2200....". Afterwards (as expected) when booting is finished, I looked for eth1 and, as expected, it doesn't exists....

I found another forum topic of about July 2010, already closed, where the answer was "talked with other colleagues/developpers and it is a known issue to be fixed in the coming days with a new module update..."

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...-2-6-34-a.html

Is it already fixed? Is there still any plan for fixing it? How can I get my wireless again working?

Finally, sorry for the very basic question, but being a somehow newby in Linux, is any way I could do a "roll-back" to the situation I had before the upgrading?

Thanks so much for your help

I found the way to solve this issue, but people arranging the update packages do have some work to do ;)

It seems that doing the upgrade to 2.6.34 the firmware for the ref. wireless adapter is lost in /lib/firmware.

Cue came to me from the post of an italian colleague:

http://www.backtrack-linux.org/forum...-firmware.html

Then, in order to have it translated into english with some more detailed instructions for newby people as I am, let me put here the exact things to be done:

Download the firmware from the official site:

Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200BG Driver Firmware (in my case the file was ipw2200-fw-3.1.gz)

Then, it has to be uncompressed:

tar xzvf ipw2200-fw-3.1.gz

ipw2200-fw-3.1
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-bss.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-sniffer.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/LICENSE.ipw2200.fw
ipw2200-fw-3.1/ipw2200-ibss.fw

Last step is to copy all those files in directory ipw2200-fw-3.1 to /lib/firmware/

You can test and check it doing

rmmod ipw2200
modprobe ipw2200
iwconfig

And our old eth1 should be again there !!!! :)

Again, the update packages developpers should do some work to avoid the ref. firmware to be lost.

I do like guid in top, I have same problem like that, I use IBM T40 with wireless ipw2200 and ipw2915 is same :

Code:

---


root@bt:~# rmmod ipw2200
root@bt:~# modprobe ipw2200
root@bt:~# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

irda0    no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:off/any
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s  Tx-Power=20 dBm  Sensitivity=8/0
          Retry limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0  Missed beacon:0

root@bt:~#

---

However, I still can't use wifi :confused: what should I do now :(

I have the same problem as tommysmith on a Thinkpad T43

I get the following error:

airmon-ng start eth1
eth1 Intel 2200BG ipw2200 - [phy4]mon1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device

I tried ataferner's solution I didnt have any issues but I still cant see cant connect wireless.

I was having the same problem but realized that the OS is looking for the files in /lib/firmware but the files were in /lib/firmware/ipw2200-fw-3.1! Simply copy the files from the ipw2200-fw-3.1 folder and paste them in /lib/firmware. After doing that, I have not had a problem.